Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Gary stopped by this evening for a quick game of DBA. Brought is Vikings again. After their defeat at the hands of the Welsh, they decided to nip across the Irish Sea to invade Ireland…

SITUATION/SCENARIO

Norse Vikings attacking… er… Norse Irish?

FORCES

Norse Irish (III/46)1x Auxilia General5x Auxilia4x Psiloi2x Blade

Norse Viking (III/40b)1x Blade General10x Blade1x Warband

THE GAME

I rolled a two for deployment – adding my whopping aggression factor of one – it was determined I would be defending as the total was less than the Vikings aggression factor witout even rolling the dice. Still lacking some waterway tiles, I lined up a river along one side and said that everything one the other side of the river was water too… I threw out the maximum terrain nastiness to try and break up the Viking shield wall and we went at it!

(Remember: click on the pictures for a bigger version)

With some lucky PIP dice at the outset the Irish dashed for the marsh and woods!

Gary was pretty conservative with his deployment – trying really hard to keep his line together and not expose any flanks.

More maneuvering in the marsh

Oh what a mess.

Finally the Blade and Warband near the coastline clash.

The first clash was pretty inconclusive. Bit of shoving back and forth…

The lines draw ever nearer.

Garry got a high PIP roll and brought nearly all his line into contact – there was a bit of pushing back and forth – mostly the Irish being pushed back…

But I also lost some Auxilia in the process… Irish down one.

More shoving back and forth.

I realized my blade out on the end of the line could actually benefit from some Psiloi support against the Warband.

Alas they arrived too late… Irish down two.

Once again however my general was stuck in the line – overlapped on both sides. To take off the pressure I advanced the blade in – but that brought them into side edge contact with the Warband. So I moved the Psiloi into contact with the warband – I thought this a rather clever move as I figured the warband would beat the psiloi and follow them back – out of side edge contact with my Blade. Unfortunately the Psioloi beat the warband and they recoiled into a postion where they still overlapped the blade… ah well…

Things went south at the other end of the line when a stand of Auxilia was cought by three Blade in the woods and utterly destroyed! Irish down three!

Hmmm… In that shot he does look a bit squat – keep in mind he’s crouched over and running low…

These are some “Russians” from Alternative ArmiesFlintloque/Slaughterloo
miniatures. A line of Napoleonic Fantasy armies. The Russians seem to all be undead. Above are a Russian Vampire officer and a Lich (supposed to be like an orthodox preacher maybe?). I’d seen these listed on ebay for dirt cheap and have wanted to shceck out the figures for a long time. They’re crazy big….

Big and chunky…

Here they are with some of the Foundry and Minifig rifles…

They came in a box set with some Zombie Russian musketeers and an assortment of Elves (who are “French”) in tattered cold weather clothes There was some scenarios for the game in the box – which I’ve never really looked at – presumably having to do with the Retreat from Moscow (or Alternative Armies fantasy equivalent of Moscow…) .

Feels like forever since I last painted anything… probably been a week… I did clean off my painting area last week in an attempt to focus on… well… SOMETHING!? The work area was polluted by far too many “in the works” projects that I plinked away at but never really finished up any of. So I put everything that was on the desk away. Then a couple days later I started filling it with… well… new things… (for a couple days in between all I worked on was various sculpting projects and some mouldmaking!)

An order from Black Tree Design arrived which included a pack of Soviet Sailors. I also had a pack of them from a previous order. So I decided to knock them off…

It’s fun to work on something different from time to time – keep things fresh and interesting… but from time to time it has the potential to distract or completely derail any longterm plans or projects! While painting these I started thinking up scenarios I could se them in and just about revived our East Front Campaign (putting the current Dragonlance Campaign on hold… until I got it out of my system…). Luckily I didn’t quite have these finished by Saturday evening (when we normally play) and we raged ahead with the fantasy campaign. By next weekend I’ll have forgotten about these and some whole new thing will be threatening to derail the current campaign…

Coming soon on Tim’s Miniature Wargaming Blog:

There’s some other odds and sods accumulating on the workbench… Some 1812 British and other nappy stuff … some more Zulu War stuff (whut the…!?)… the fruits of my sculpting labours…

Sunday, November 20, 2011

No, he’s not balding, I’ve left the top blank to add different hats (shakos for regulars and top hats and wide brimmed hats, etc for some of the militia).

I was thinking I might make a mould at this point and cast some dolls. Then I can add different hats to the dolls and have them holding muskets in a variety of positions (mostly marching), add haversacks and canteens and maybe knapsacks on a few… then make moulds of those and cast by the dozens! Huzzah!

I thought I might even cut of the cartridge box and turn the bayonet scabbard into a sword scabbard and make an officer figure…? Maybe even some ensigns…?

I may or may not add cording on the front of the jacket - perhaps just leaving that as "paint-on detail", keping them just a bit more generic...

Coming soon on Tim’s Miniature Wargaming Blog:

More pics of the modeling…? I totally cleared the workbench of painting projects – planning to only get out ONE at a time (so as not to get so easily distracted…. We’ll see how that works out…).

Friday, November 18, 2011

Haven’t been doing much painting lately. Playing games? Oh yes. Planning and thinking about game? Absolutely! Sculpting minis? Yep, even doing a bit of that… But not-so-much with the actual painting. So I knocked off this one the other evening, just for something completely different to do, and to try and get myself going again.

(Remember: click on the pictures for a bigger version)

This is an I-Kore Void figure. I’m using it (and a few others I have… if I ever get them done…) as part of a small Space Marine detachment. Not part of any particular Sci-Fi universe, just the generic Big Stick of any Space Empire’s policy making…

I was kind of back and forth on whether to do them in some sort of camouflage or something bright and ultimately chose bright. They’re the sort that want you to know that they know that you know where they are and they don’t care because they’re THAT bad-ass…

I’ve been thinking a lot about the next year and trying to forecast what I’m going to be interested in doing… It’s always better to have SOME sort of plan – otherwise I just spin wheels bying and painting willy-nilly and never really accomplishing much. I think I’m going to host three major game events; a Dark Age England De Bellis Antiquitatis campaign in February, a Hordes of The Things campaign in June, and a big Battle of Queenston Heights game in October.

The first two are easy enough. I just have to finish up the Pre-Feudal Scotts for the DBA campaign (and it’d be nice, but by no means necessary to finish up another Anglo-Saxon and/or Viking and/or West Frankish army…). For the HOTT campaign… well I could run that tomorrow I have enough armies… but I’ll probably finish up a few more, and add options for the existing ones, between now and June. The third will require a bit more research, a whole lot of painting (and possibly sculpting) and play-testing…

The big question right now is sculpt and cast my own or just say eff-it and BUY all the stuff I’ll need. At the scale I’m planning I could probably do it for under $500. How much time will it take me to model and cast all the necessary figures? What is that time worth? (not to mention how much has metal gone up since I last bought some and do I have enough to cast all the stuff I’d need or would I need to buy more?) Many things to take into consideration.

As I mentioned I have been doing a bit of sculpting lately and have been quite enjoying it… though it is a ssssslllllloooooooowwwwww process for me, and not always successful!? That’s the big worry – I spend a tonne of time trying to sculpt my oen figures to only have them look like rubbish when I’m done and then end up buying figures anyway and wishing I’d spent all that time painting… ugh… Oh how I torture myself…

Coming soon on Tim’s Miniature Wargaming Blog:

Hmmmmm…. Nothing’s really jumping out at me as something I desperately want to paint… no games arranged that there might be a report of… Maybe some pics of my generic 1812 infantryman…? I was thinking I might build it up as a doll – legs, torso, basic equipment (the crossed straps with and head (with no head dress) and try casing those and then adding details to make more specific…

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Yet ANTOHER game report! I got in a game of DBA with John this evening – who I haven’t had an opportunity to play with for some time – so it was nice to catch up a bit and finally get to try out my new(-ish) Irish DBA army in a genuine game of DBA (They’ve been fielded a couple times in HOTT – but it ends up being a Warband army which is very, VERY different from the mix of Auxillia and Psiloi that the Irish are in DBA!). John was kind enough to invade Ireland with some Vikings so I could try them out.

FORCES

Norse Irish (III/46)1x Auxilia General5x Auxilia4x Psiloi2x Blade

Norse Viking (III/40b)1x Blade General10x Blade1x Warband

THE GAME

The Irish are “Littoral” so I should have had a coastline along there somewhere… but I haven’t gotten to building any – they are my next project (along with some more marshes!)

(Remember: click on the pictures for a bigger version)

The armies advance. I sent a contingent up the flank to try and ambush any Norse that strayed into the woods – figuring it would be my only real chance at causing any damage (Blade vs Auxilia in the open was a non-starter)

One PIP roll meant only one file advanced on that next turn.

The Viking berserks (Warband) went hunting the Irish skirmishers (psiloi) in the woods…

…and forced them back!

More Fighting in the woods – the Psioloi expand to overlap the Warband and my Auxilia contact the Viking blade.

The Auxilia had some brief success forcing the Viking blade to fall back a bit, but the berserks just kept pushing those skirmishers back.

Again the Auxilia threw back the Blade that advanced back into contact (as well as another blade that closed the door to flank), but the berserks just kept pushing the skirmishers back – right out of the woods!

The Auxilia press their advantage following the recoiling blade and the skirmishers move in to flank the berserks.

Ther Berserks throw back the flankers and push the skirmishers to their front further out of the woods, While the Irish auxilia were also thrown back by the Vikings.

The Vikings moved back in to flank the Irish Auxilia and beat them down (Irish down one)

Again the Irish skirmishers try to surround the berserks, while others harass the Vikings flank.

An element of Blade is lost on the Vikings flank. (Vikings down one)

And the Berserks ran our of steam and were also destroyed! (Vikings down two)

The Vikings, however, decided to ignore the Irish skirmishers shenanigans on their flank and pressed on towards the Irish main line.

Irish Skirmishers again try to harass the Viking flank.

More Vikings are peeled off the flank to deal with them.

The Irish FLEE from the horrible hairy Vikings!

The other skirmishers tried to maneuver around to the rear – but they too are forced to flee (towards the Viking camp!)

The Vikings make slow forward progress as they are constantly harassed by still MORE skirmishers on their flank!

Throwing them back

There’s little either could do – The Vking blade has a +5 vs foot in the open, the Irish Psiloi have +2… Neither quick kill, in fact the Psioloi can’t be killed at all – unless they flee of the table or the Vikings managed to actually flank one… )

One group of Psiloi made it to within spittin distance of the Viking camp – but I didn’t have enough PIPs on any later turns to try and get them into contacts with it…

CRASH! The main lines finally meet!

All along the line the Irish are thrown back!

On the following bound their move in again – and are again thrown back.

On the Vikings next turn they were able to isolate one of the blade, that had remained in combat, and destroyed them! (Irish down two – things looking like they will be going downhill rapidly!)

Everything all lined up…

The Irish, with noting much better to do, moved back – and lost an element of Auxilia for their troubles (Irish down three…).

On the final Viking bound they tried to flank the Irish general – and were thrown back!! (destroying a stand of Viking blade in the process!!), but elsewhere down the line the Vikings took out another stand of Irish and that brought the game to a conclusion…

The Irish are tougher to play than the Welsh. That lack of quick –kill the warband get on blades and spears makes a big difference. It’s very definitely still all about the terrain – and I didn’t have nearly enough of it spread out in a cagey enough fashion to hamper the Vikings as much as I needed to…

Waterway and marshes are definitely the next things to build!!

Coming soon on Tim’s Miniature Wargaming Blog:

Hopefully get back to some painting soonish! Or perhaps some terrain making!!